Tourism in metropolitan Detroit

Tourism in metropolitan Detroit, Michigan is a significant factor for the region's culture and for its economy, comprising nine percent of the area's two million jobs. About 15.9 million people visit Metro Detroit annually, spending an estimated $4.8 billion. Detroit is one of the largest American cities and metropolitan regions to offer casino resort hotels. Leading multi-day events throughout Metro Detroit attract super-sized crowds of hundreds of thousands to over three million people. More than fifteen million people cross the highly traveled nexus of the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel annually. Detroit is at the center of an emerging Great Lakes Megalopolis. An estimated 46 million people live within a 300-mile (480 km) radius of Metro Detroit.

The metropolitan region's tourism industry depends on drawing large crowds with quality attractions and entertainment in order to positively impact the local economy. As the world's traditional automotive center, the city hosts the annual North American International Auto Show in January, a multi-day event. Other major multi-day events that reflect the region's culture such as the Motown Winter Blast and the Windsor–Detroit International Freedom Festival, typically held the last week of June, can draw super sized-crowds of hundreds of thousands to over three million people. A 2007 poll, conducted by Selzer and Co., reported that about two-thirds of the millions of residents in the suburban area occasionally dine and attend cultural events or take in professional games in the city of Detroit. In 2006, the four-day Motown Winter Blast drew a cold weather crowd of about 1.2 million people to Campus Martius Park area downtown. Metro Detroit is one of thirteen U.S. cities with teams from four major sports. Besides its casino resort hotels, the region's leading attraction is The Henry Ford, America's largest indoor-outdoor museum complex, a National Historic Landmark museum entertainment complex with an IMAX theater next to the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn. The Detroit Institute of Arts in the cultural center downtown is another leading attraction and national historic site. The Detroit Festival of the Arts in Midtown draws about 350,000 people. The Detroit Zoo in Royal Oak has an Arctic Ring of Wildlife exhibit with an underwater viewing tunnel that includes the largest polar bear exhibit in the U.S. Together, The Henry Ford, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Zoo attract about 2,500,000 visitors annually. Detroit is also home to the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant. Built in 1904 and now running as a museum, it is the oldest car factory building in the world open to the public and was the birthplace of the Ford Model T.

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